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John R. Rice has explained in his book about prayer, that prayer is ASKING. I do not think for one minute that he means just asking for things for ourselves, but he means to petition the great Lord of the Universe for requests for other people. Intercessory prayer is a precious thing. You hear about answers to prayer from people who have prayed for unsaved loved ones of literally YEARS before they come to a saving knowledge of God’s love and grace. God is not on our time schedule.

I do not forget that these verses of scripture regarding warfare come right on the heels of Paul’s discourse on husbands and wives, or on the proper order of behavior of leaders and followers. I have been taught that just because there are chapter breaks in the Bible now, there were not those breaks in the original, they were put there so we could look up things easier.

 I have been taught that marriage was such an important institution in the Bible, that God not only ordained that institution FIRST, but He gave very specific instructions as to how to HAVE a marriage. Seems that being prepared for warfare is one of the parts of having a marriage.

One of those VERY important ingredients of marriage is to realize that the devil WILL fight against it, because it is a picture of Christ and the Church. What better way to discredit Christ and his Church than to take the human picture of that institution and make it cheap and gaudy and totally unimportant? We should NOT make a break in reading from Eph. 5:1 to Eph 6:24. If you read it that way, you get a total picture not only of marriage, but the entire Christian life. There is really NO WAY you can separate the great mystery of Christ (marriage) from wrestling against the rulers of darkness of this world.

If we read it this way, I believe we will know better how to fight for our marriages, especially those of us who do not have the "perfect marriage". And those of you who think you do have the "perfect marriage","....take heed, lest ye fall" I Cor. 10:12b

I’ve said all that to say this; God’s word tells us that when we have done everything we think we could possibly do, when we have exhausted every resource, when we have talked to counselors, when we have counseled with our pastor, after we have talked to attorneys and completely given up hope, we are supposed to STAND, that is; to remain unchanged and to make resistance. I believe we are to make resistance to the Devil. We CANNOT give up.

Reflecting on this word STAND...It seems to me to be one of the qualities of God, remaining unchanged. What better way to give back to the Saviour who sent His only Son to die for us?

Now the natural question is, how do you stand when things seem impossible?? The answer is simply this: by following the strategy for WAR outlined in Eph.6:10-18. Don’t you feel beat up? Don’t you feel like you’ve been on the front lines all by yourself? Well, maybe you have...why don’t you give God’s way a try? I sure would not want to go to war without the proper gear, or with only PART of it. I am SURE that is why Paul said to put on the WHOLE armor of God....WHY?? So that we would be able to STAND against the wiles of the devil. How simple is that? And yet time after time, we try to fight in our OWN strength, with our own puny little human reasoning. I don’t know about you, but I think I would rather have the strategy of an omniscient God than that of myself...........and His strategy plans are right there in His Book.

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